Categories: random
Tags: animals, names, Christianity
Date: 19 November 2007 20:57:35
For Dith's recent word challenge, one of my words was 'rhinoceros', which got me thinking about animal names in general (as in, species names, not "Fido" type names). Now, I'm quite happy when looking at the early chapters of Genesis to see it as myth, as a way of using story/fable/whatever to make sense of the world and to illustrate truth, rather than being a precise account of what actually happened, and I find that much more helpful, both intellectually and spiritually, than assuming Genesis is a science textbook. But, the one bit in the creation story that I really really like, and think would be so cool if it was really true, is the bit where God and Adam name all the animals. How cool would that be?! It must have been such a laugh coming out with random funny-sounding utterances and assigning them to actual creatures. Maybe I've got too much time on my hands (I wish - sigh) but more than once I have wondered (this is I suppose linked to Dith's original musings on words) why this particular creature is called 'elephant' and not 'hufflepuffle', and why this one is 'wombat' and not 'reginald', for a couple of random examples.
So here's my challenge: imagine you are Adam, sitting there in the Garden of Eden with God and you're presented with all the animals. What would you have called them?